


The Domestics

by MarigoldVance



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Return to Treasure Island (TV 1996)
Genre: (mild) Gore, (mild) Smut, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Collection of Prompt Fills, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Movie Fusion - The Domestics, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Apocalypse, Serial Chapters, Survival, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29499453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarigoldVance/pseuds/MarigoldVance
Summary: The Reset changed Ross as much as it changed the world. He never considered himself a good man; his morality was always fluid and contextual, often considered deviant. Now, there’s little chance that Ross will ever be able to indulge the idea of goodness as he navigates the dangerous, corrupt landscape of the former UK.Jim never believed in good or bad, preferring to exist in spectrums of grey. Survival doesn’t allow for that kind of polarized thinking, anyway. Still, he tries, for his mother’s sake. He operates on the defense: Kill or be killed. It works to keep them under the radar, away from the gangs, until it doesn’t.When Ross and Jim collide, Ross is struck by the unusual urge to do the right thing and get the boy out of danger (and, subsequently, the boy’s mother). It’s been a long time since Ross has allowed himself to feel responsible for anyone outside of himself and, though Jim proves himself capable, Ross can’t seem to shake the desire to do whatever it takes to keep Jim alive.
Relationships: Jim Hawkins/Ross Poldark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this 'verse revolves around the [GatheringFiKi H/C Bingo](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/linane/11800035/244767/244767_original.png); each chapter explores a different prompt/square - sometimes more than one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: a hot bath (alone or together)

_Year 3 AR, October_

The water coughs, splutters brown for a few seconds before it releases a steady, clear stream. Ross plugs the drain, twists the correct tap as far as it’ll go and strips while he waits for the tub to fill. Steam rises and permeates the room until it’s a dense fog, clouding the dirty windows and muddying the layers of dust on every surface.

Ross takes care of the worst of himself at the sink, grabs one of the three toothbrushes from the chrome holder to scrub under his fingernails – fluorescent yellow, the handle shaped like a mouse with lime green dots for the eyes and nose. The soft-stiff bristles feel good, practically erotic, as they lift the evidence of Ross’ morning. Soil and blood and decomposition.

There’s a cake of soap, halfway diminished and covered in a grey film, which he moistens with a cold splash from the faucet, and suds up between his hands. He rubs the lather into his cheeks, forehead, nose, rinses his hands and lifts a washcloth from the shelf above the toilet. Damping it thoroughly with more cold water, he smears it across his face in hard strokes, pulling up months of surviving outdoors from his skin. He proceeds to scrub his pits, under and over his balls, his cock, and scrupulously up his crack before he dumps the sullied washcloth in the sink with a splat.

Finally, deeming himself decent enough, he steps toward the tub, three-quarters full and scalding, and turns off the tap.

Ross eases himself into the water, hands in a whiteknuckled grip on either side as he sinks until he’s seated then leans back and settles his shoulders into the cradle of the head while his feet dangle over the lip of the foot. In under a minute, he's raw pink and soft, unable to suppress the near pornographic moan that resonates from deep within him. The tub is a luxurious clawfoot monstrosity in the middle of the bathroom, glossy, white acrylic with silver fixtures, that reaches Ross’ hips when he stands. There are defunct jacuzzi jets around the circumference of the inside and a small assortment of bath oils and liquid soaps arranged on a chrome bathside table which hangs over the edge beside the faucet.

By it, on the floor, sits a basket of rubber toys – a ferry with smaller components, a chubby white whale, and a turtle. Ross inhales through his nose, exhales through his mouth, closes his eyes and tries not to remember the 16- by 33-inch hole he dug behind the house.

The hot water leeches the stress from his muscles, his body relaxing in a way he hasn’t been able to since the Reset. His joints loosen, the allover tension seeps away, the recent marks and bruises he acquired are relieved of tightness and pain. 

The next time he opens his eyes, the room is dark, illuminated by the light of the moon cast through the unwashed windows. Everything is quiet which makes his hindbrain nervous but, as soon as the anxiety rises, it’s softened again when a voice crests in question, “How does it feel?”

Ross doesn’t move, doesn’t startle, which says a lot about how far he’s come to recognize Jim’s presence.

Without thinking, Ross hums in satisfaction and says, “Find out for yourself.”

It’s an invitation, one he shouldn’t extend – Sarah is downstairs, Jim’s too young, Ross knows better – but he lost his moral compass sometime around the six-month mark after the world ended. They’ve been dancing around this unspoken thing between them for awhile and, calm as he is, Ross decides to add new steps to their choreography and see what happens.

If there’s one thing Ross is good at, it’s taking risks without seeming like he’s taking them at all.

The muffled sound of fabric hitting the floor follows a brief silence, boots scuff the tiles as they’re removed and the heavy clink of metal on marble signals Jim’s acceptance. The water is probably brown by now from the compounded muck Ross carried into the tub but it’s still warm enough to be appreciated. He tucks his legs in, spreads them to make room for the breadth of Jim’s body, compact and solid and smooth in the gauzy light, as Jim joins him.

Jim’s hair smells floral and summery from the shower he took after their undertaking, his hair tickling Ross’ nostrils as he readjusts between Ross’ legs, leans back against Ross’ chest, fitting perfectly as if he was always meant to be there. Automatically, Ross winds an arm around Jim’s middle, curls the other under Jim’s to belt across Jim’s chest so Ross can place his hand gently yet firmly around the width of Jim’s throat where his thumb wipes the skin in a gesture more tender than Ross imagined himself capable of. He tips his head back and soaks contentedly with Jim’s weight anchoring him.

“Mum made supper.” Jim says, his voice low and his vowels long as he coasts toward a state of rare relaxation. 

“Mmm.”

Another long rest and then, “I’m sorry. That I couldn't—I’m sorry” And Jim sounds it, so regretful, so _sad_ for Ross who hasn’t actually felt much beyond an achy throb of sympathy for the family they found when they arrived.

“That’s how things are, boy, nothing to be done but to keep doing.”

Jim snorts, “Did Silver tell you that?”

“Why?”

“Sounds like something Silver would say, is all.”

They’re both speaking in hushed tones, barely above a whisper, reluctant to disturb the peacefulness despite the subject matter. Ross huffs in amusement and dips his head forward to press his closed mouth against the side of Jim’s head.

“It’s the truth.” Ross says into Jim’s curls, the tip of his nose tracing the shell of Jim’s ear.

Jim shivers. Ross nips.

And then Jim turns his head to the side, sags, and Ross realizes too late that the whale’s white, rubber tail is visible from Jim’s position. Jim asks, “Is it always like this? Finding dead people and, just, taking over their houses like they never existed?”

Ross sighs, settles back into the curve of the tub, hand secure at Jim’s collar, and closes his eyes again. “Yes.”

“It’s awful.”

A choked noise, a sniff.

Ross doesn’t know what else to say so he says, “Yes.”

They stay in the tub awhile longer, until the water cools completely and their fingers and toes are pruney. Jim brought Ross a fresh set of clothes when he came in, a sensible reason to interrupt Ross' bath, and lay them in a pile on the floor beside Jim’s discarded jeans and t-shirt. They dress without a word, Jim takes his gun from where he left it on the countertop and stuffs it into the back of his waistband. Ross drains the tub.

As Jim makes for the door, Ross grabs his wrist, turns Jim around and tugs him closer, breathes him in for a few heady seconds.

“I do it alone next time, Jim.” He says, eyes hard and full of meaning. “Understand?”

Jim considers him for a moment, gaze calculating, probably trying to come up with a creative way to tell Ross to _fuck off, he can handle it_. Eventually, Jim's shoulders droop and his jaw slackens and he chooses to acknowledges Ross’ edict with a faint brush of his lips against Ross’. Barely there but enough to send shockwaves through Ross’ system and shut his brain down for a considerable beat. Jim nods, chapped lips catching Ross’ stubble, and takes Ross by the hand to lead him downstairs where Sarah greets them with a bountiful meal of cooked ramen, canned fruits and two kinds of soda, the best they've had since London. 

They all ignore the Thomas the Tank Engine blanket draped over the arm of the couch. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: flashbacks

_2019 AD, June_

Elizabeth sprawls across the chaise, a vision in blue cotton, her glossy, chestnut hair in a plait draped over one shoulder. She sits in a patch of moonlight, a heavy book in her lap, open and face down to hold her place while she pauses to receive. Her lashes flutter, eyes glittering, humor in their corners. Her full lips slowly form a delicate, crescent moon smile that shows no teeth. Plains of milk-white skin, richly pale and strangely ethereal, an angel plucked from Heaven and delivered to Earth just for Ross.

The sight of her takes Ross’ breath away.

It isn’t real.

He knows this by the absence of imperfection though it takes him a moment to realize. She’s smooth where she should be creased, soft where she should be rough; she hasn’t looked at Ross like this, carefree and in love, since last August, when Ross proposed, and the world was still full. Normal.

“What are you doing here?” Ross asks, strangled, and he can’t feel his hand but it’s reaching for her all the same. “What is this?”

Elizabeth tilts her head ever so slightly, swings her legs to place her bare feet on the ground and lays the book aside. A facsimile of concern flits in her expression, a small change, imperceptible really except Ross can somehow tell. Something in the set of her mouth, not quite downturned, not risen either. She lifts gracefully from the chaise like a dancer, such an easy, liquid motion, and steps toward him.

Her mouth moves around the shapes of words and, while Ross can’t hear them properly, he can sense their meaning, “I've missed you.”

A quick pan around the room offers no explanation; everything is where it should be: Two walls of bookshelves, bursting with first editions, a desk of varnished maple stationed beneath the window, a pair of armchairs angled toward the proud fireplace beside the door Ross entered through. And, finally, the chaise, bare of the pillows and lap blanket Elizabeth usually brings in from Ross’ bedroom whenever she sneaks in to read in privacy.

As she closes the distance between them, the ground begins to shake, the windows rattle, and then there’s smoke. Thick, black, tendrils wrap themselves around Elizabeth’s swanlike neck and disappear into her gaping mouth. She stumbles forward, coughing, retching, begging Ross to help her. He grabs the back of his shirt and tugs it off, guides them both to the ground so he can curl his body around her as if it will do any good.

“Use this!” Ross chokes, bunching up his shirt and shoving it over her mouth. “Don’t breathe it in!”

Elizabeth turns in his arms – still beautiful, always beautiful – and begs him, eyes brimming with tar and tears, “Help me,” She says, clear as a bell, as if she isn’t suffocating. “Help me, Ross, help me! He—”

≡ꙩ≡

_Year 2 AR, June_

“—lp! Ross!”

The desperate yell drags Ross back to the present, distorted memories crashing to the back of his skull and leaving in their wake a high-pitched ring. The sound retreats to the background and very quickly gets lost under the commotion unfolding in the camp.

Ross shakes the spots from his eyes and hauls himself off the ground, disoriented and lead-limbed. The explosion knocked him into the side of one of the Gamblers’ machines, leaving a sizeable dent behind in the shape of his body. It takes a moment for Ross to find his balance once he’s upright and the instant he does, he throws himself into the fray, pulling his hunting knife from his boot as he goes.

First, he expertly twirls the knife in his palm, grips the handle and sinks the blade into the neck of the first Gambler he comes across, a man spitting fire from the nozzle of a flamethrower, laughing like a deranged clown as he chars flesh from bone as easy as a handshake. Ross feels no remorse as the Gambler’s body hits the packed dirt with a heavy thump and a thick gurgle.

“Ross!!”

Spinning on his heel, Ross’ eyes find the source calling his name.

“Jim!”

Without second thought, Ross launches himself in Jim’s direction, methodically cutting the throats of those who try to obstruct him. He grabs one Gambler’s gun before it falls to the ground with its handler, aims and fires in a single breath, movements fluid, the weapon an extension of his arm. Ross has killed a thousand times, follows through the muscle memory with his gaze trained on Jim’s face, contorted with the fear of being taken and used the way the Gamblers use everyone who isn’t one of them. Ross doesn't like the way fear looks on Jim. 

Four more Gamblers die, skulls bursting when the bullets make impact, before Ross reaches the pair trying to drag Jim into the back of one of their machines. The trail of bodies like breadcrumbs behind Ross entices the pair to throw Jim down between them and reach for the sky. They chuckle nervously, manic eyes darting around at their fallen brothers and sisters. Enough remain, terrorizing the camp, that if the idiots make a fuss, Ross could easily be disposed of. Thankfully, it seems the one brain cell the pair share has been used to exhaustion already.

Jim scrambles onto his knees and punches one of the pair in the side, grabbing the handgun from the Gambler’s belt, cocking it, and shooting the Gambler in the head while the Gambler's still hunched over in reaction to Jim’s attack. Blood and tissue sprays Jim’s front and the body collapses to the ground.

Ross distracts from his impressed smirk by shooting the second Gambler in the knee and then, once the Gambler’s rolled forward, in the head, matching Jim’s shot exactly.

Eyes wild, lungs heaving, Jim shakes and drops his gun. Capable the boy may be but Ross can't pretend Jim has ever been responsible for ending someone's life before, as ruthlessly as he just did. While Ross wants to reassure Jim that Jim did the right thing, there's no time. Ross marches over to him swiftly, yanks Jim up and dusts him off, doesn’t waste his breath asking if Jim’s alright. 

“We find your mother and then we get the fuck out of here.” Ross says, voice unwavering, and Jim nods.

One arm slung over Jim’s shoulder, both hunched slightly like that ever deflected a bullet, Ross leads Jim along the outskirts of the fray toward the tent Jim shares with Sarah. She isn't there but she is alive, ducked behind four of the barrels Silver uses to collect rainwater, shivering and frightened and covered in someone's blood. There's no plan, just retreat, and she follows Ross' directions without argument, Jim ushering her into the shadows stretched across the field with an arm banded around her waist. 

Dashing through the tall grass, the scent of burning flesh and the racket of screams and demented laughter a good distance behind them, Ross chances a look back and almost swallows his tongue. Still and pale, a vision in blue cotton, Elizabeth stands in the middle of the raucous. She's beautiful as always despite the tar blackening her eyes and staining her cheeks. She reaches for Ross.

He wants to reach back.

Jim's hand closes around Ross’ wrist, real and clammy and warm, “Come on!”

And Ross abandons Elizabeth to the carnage.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt(s): chained up / shackled, broken bone(s), loss of sight/ ~~smell~~ /hearing/speech

_Year 2 AR, August_

Everyone has secrets. However, in the aftermath of the Reset, most consider theirs trivial. Not worth sharing. Old news. The worst things people can do have been done to the nth degree in this new landscape. Lying, cheating, murder, none of it qualifies as contemptible anymore. The world is lawless, the government, gone underground to wait out the peak of the violence, will only rise again when most of the remaining population has gunned itself down to the brink of extinction.

Mankind is as fucked as it is fucked up. 

Still, Ross wasn’t prepared for Jim’s secret to bite them in the arse quite the way it did.

On the other hand, Ross brought this upon himself. The only way out was _through_ , and Ross, for some unfathomable reason, couldn’t let the gang of Sheets take Jim. Distraction was their only defense and, of the six of their camp on the scavenge, Ross was expendable.

Now, hours later, Ross is alone, chained up, chest rattling on every exhale, wrist throbbing and jaw drooping at an unnatural angle. Although he’s in pain all over, it’s most acute on the left side of his face, a deep gash bleeding sluggishly down his neck and soaking his shirt. Wherever the Sheets have him stashed is pitch black and stuffy, soundless apart from a sharp ringing in his ears that makes him dizzy. He’s thrown up twice, spewed and dribbled down his front as his jaw hangs loose and hurts to move.

It’s unlikely that he’ll be rescued. He’ll die here and he can’t think in straight enough lines to decide whether or not he’s okay with that. While he’s resigned to dying at the hands of psychopaths, he always imagined it would be more remarkable than floating in a void, covered in his own sick and saliva, overthinking the last meal he shared with a boy who doesn’t give a fuck about Ross beyond how much Ross can do to keep his mother safe. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Jim’s stubbornness to protect Sarah however he can. Ross sympathizes with that brand of fierce responsibility. 

Once upon a time, Ross was exactly like Jim, willing to do _anything_ to keep someone he loved - loves - out of danger. Hell, if Silver had looked at Ross the way he looks at Jim, Ross would've draped himself over Silver's lap and ridden him with all the enthusiasm of a bucking bronco just to guarantee Elizabeth's safety. Too bad Ross doesn't share Jim's cherubic appearance; it certainly sells the idea of innocence and that's something Silver is guilty of lusting after. 

Ross’ mind goes on a tangent, fading in and out of focus. Jim’s thin-lipped smile brightens the dark behind Ross’ eyelids, Jim's dimples flash, eyes the color of the Cornwall tide gaze at Ross, soft and inviting. Ross wonders mildly if Jim offers those gazes to everyone he deems a suitable bodyguard. Ross hopes not. 

Jim.

Defiant, brilliant, _young_ Jim.

Christ.

Maybe Ross' predicament is karma finally determining where it draws its line with him. The slaughter of hundreds is all well and good but eyeing up a seventeen-year-old with an aptitude for bending the truth and getting what he wants is a cosmic criminal offense only pardoned for John Silver - the man who provides for the weak and defenseless. Had Ross known the price of the fantasies Jim stirs in his hindbrain, many involving bending Jim over the boot of a car, Ross tells himself he would’ve walked away the second he found Jim.

Fuck.

No.

He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Would’ve done exactly as he did and brought Jim back to Silver, back to the camp, and made sure Jim and Sarah were looked after. And Ross isn’t comfortable with where his thoughts are going but it’s too late to snatch them back. Memories flood Ross’ mind of the sunkissed slope of Jim’s neck, the curve of his bare shoulder; deft fingers taking apart and reassembling his firearm, braiding rope, flourishing a blade. The cheeky upturn of Jim’s lips, the flicker of a pink tongue, the grazing touches Jim bestows on Ross recently, lingering fingertips on the sensitive skin of Ross’ inner wrist.

There’s no doubt Ross would jump behind the wheel and drive another car through the gang of Sheets if it meant keeping Jim alive.

As Ross' thoughts start to fuzz at the edges, the wall across from him bursts inward, spraying chunks and splinters of wood everywhere. The light is sudden and blinding and it takes too long for Ross’ vision to adjust through his right eye, the left swollen shut. He’s jostled, someone’s saying something, yelling, and suddenly he’s being dragged to his feet. After one failed attempt to stay upright, the world goes disagreeably upside down, the chains around his wrists and ankles chaffing raw skin as Ross is hauled over someone’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

He screams, or tries to, but it bubbles out of his throat in a thick gurgle.

“God, John, be careful!”

The words are unclear to Ross but he is immediately soothed by the cadence of Jim’s voice.

Jim came for him.

And then Ross plummets into oblivion.


End file.
